Moslems open pockets, not
doors to Kosovo refugees
05:50 a.m. May 14, 1999 Eastern
By Alistair Lyon
CAIRO, May 14 (Reuters) - They
may share the same religion, but the
plight of ethnic Albanian refugees
fleeing the horrors of Kosovo has
evoked a tempered response from
the Moslem world.
Only NATO-member Turkey,
which says it now hosts around
15,000 Kosovo refugees, has taken
in a substantial number of the more
than 900,000 ethnic Albanians who
have flooded over the borders since
fighting began in Kosovo in March
1998.
While Moslem countries
instinctively sympathise with their
co-religionists in Kosovo, most are
in no hurry to offer them sanctuary,
preferring to donate money or relief
supplies.
Arabs recall how hundreds of
thousands of Palestinians fled or
were driven from their homes in
what they see as the ethnic
cleansing that accompanied the
creation of Israel in 1948.
Half a century later, those
Palestinians and their children, some
still huddled in refugee camps in
Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, have
scant chance of returning to their
homeland.
''Experience shows that once we
create a problem of refugees and
scatter them around, we won't be
able to control the problem and
bring them back for whatever
reasons,'' Foreign Minister Amr
Moussa said when asked if Egypt
would accept any from Kosovo.
In Iran, which staged a nationwide
day of solidarity with Moslem
ethnic Albanians on Thursday,
former President Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani explicitly linked the two
expulsions.
''The Balkan crisis is an event
resembling the occupation of
Palestine and the exclusion of
Moslems from their homeland,''
newspapers quoted him as saying.
Israel, while refusing to contemplate
the return of exiled Palestinians, is
taking in around 200 refugees from
Kosovo.
Turkey has pledged to
accommodate 20,000 inside the
country and says its Red Crescent
organisation has set up camps in
Macedonia and Albania that can
shelter a further 20,000.
Many Turks have family ties to the
Balkans, a direct link that
strengthens historical and religious
ties dating back to some 500 years
of Ottoman rule of the Balkans.
Iran, which now heads the
55-member Organisation of the
Islamic Conference (OIC), has
condemned Serb brutality against
Kosovo Moslems and punitive
NATO raids against Yugoslavia.
NATO attacks on Yugoslavia to
defend the people of Kosovo, who
happen to be mostly Moslem, have
created a dilemma for Iran and
many other Moslem critics of
Western air strikes on Iraq, but few
outside Iran and Libya have
denounced NATO's campaign.
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd has
urged NATO to use all necessary
force to thwart Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic.
OIC chief Ibrahim al-Laraki said in
Tehran last week that Islamic
countries did not want to abet Serb
policy by accepting refugees and
thereby taking them further from
their homeland.
Iran says it has opened a camp in
Macedonia near the Kosovo
border to provide aid and medical
services to refugees and sent nine
planes with 240 tonnes of relief
goods.
Fund-raising campaigns are under
way in the oil-rich Gulf, which sees
itself as protector of the world's
Moslems.
In one week alone, $20 million was
raised in Saudi Arabia which is also
regularly flying in medical and food
supplies. The Saudi Red Crescent
has sent medical volunteers to
Tirana and pledged to set up 10
health centres and a hospital.
Kuwait and Qatar are sending relief
goods, while the United Arab
Emirates has upgraded an airfield
and set up a $3 million camp for
10,000 refugees at Kukes in
Albania which aid workers say is
the cleanest, best-managed and
safest in the area.
''We will carry good memories
from the Arabs. We will always
remember them,'' said Rezarta
Krasnitche, an 18-year-old student
who had fled Kosovo with her
family after Serb threats.
Copyright 1999 Reuters Limited. |
